Shuttle is updating its tiny desktop computers with several new models sporting Intel Kaby Lake chips which means that they can manage 4K.

The first is the Shuttle XPC NC03U nano - a PC that measures 5.6 x 5.6 x 1.7 and which has room for a 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD and up to 32GB of DDR4-2133 MHz memory.

The system will be available with Intel Celeron 3865U, Core i3-7100U, Core i5-7200U, and Core i7-7500U CPU options. These are Intel’s 15 watt dual-cores which are targeted at laptops and other compact computers.

It comes with an HDMI and DisplayPort, an M.2 2280 connector for an SSD, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11/b/g/n WiFi, an SD card reader, a USB 3.0 Type-A port, a USB 3.0 Type-C port, two USB 2.0 ports, and an RS 232 port. Should be able to support 4K video playback at 60 Hz

Shuttle has not mentioned a release date, or a price. The barebones of its older model was $145. If you want anything more you have to pay for storage, memory, and an operating system.

Apollo Lake is a second generation 14nm SoC for entry level tablets and computers and it serves the market that used to be known as Atom processors. Nowadays, Intel calls these CPUs Celeron and Pentium and the new generation was made available on Friday.

Apollo Lake was developed under the Goldmont codename and it promised that it should end up 30 percent faster than Braswell, the current 14nm SoC for mini PCs, tablets and entry level notebooks.

Apollo Lake comes with the 9th generation Graphics, similar to the one found in Skylake processors, supporting DirectX 12, Open GL 4.4, Open GL ES 3.2 and Open CL 2.0.

The new chip supports DDR3L/LPDDR3 at 1866 MT/s or LPDDR4 up to 2400 MT/s, and the fastest, called Pentium J4205, works between 1.5GHz and 2.6GHz as the maximal clock. It has 2MB cache, four cores and four threads, 10W TDP and Intel HD graphics 505. This is the desktop version and it will sell for $161.

The next is the Intel Celeron Processor J3455 with 2MB cache and four cores up to 2.3GHz and this will sell for $107. Last on the Apollo Lake desktop list is the Intel Celeron Processor J3355, a dual core with 2MB cache and clock speeds up to 2.5GHz. it will sell for $107 and has the same 10 W TDP.

The fastest mobile Apollo Lake is Pentium N4200. It runs at 1.1GHz to 2.5Ghz, has 2MB RAM, four cores and four threads, Intel HD 505 graphics and 6W TDP. This sells for $161 and that sounds kind of expensive to us.

Next is is the Celeron Processor N3350 with 2MB cache and clock speeds up to 2.4GHz, two cores and 6W TDP, selling for $107. The last Apollo Lake is the Celeron Processor N3450 with 2MB cache and 2.2 GHz and this is another quad core with 6W TDP selling for $107.00.

This should not be seen or confused with Cherry Trail Atom, also known as the Atom X7 and the Atom X5 branded processors. The successor to Cherry Trail was codenamed Willow Trail and the company also had a Broxton smartphone chip and SoFIA MID.

Intel told us back in April that both of these were cancelled. It remains to be seen how the manufacturers fill in the void in the mini PC market now that Intel has halted tablet chip manufacturing.

Shuttle computers have released its latest barebone that now supports Intel 170 series chipset and Skylake processor.

Shuttle mini PC with heatpipe cooling for LGA1151 processor continues a long tradition getting the performance machines in a small form factor. This is a 14.2 liter black aluminum chassis but it can definitely pack high end desktop components and offer a small form factor PC with little compromises.

This is a PC that will support dual slot graphic card and that can run all Skylake processors including the fastest Intel Core i7-6700K at 4.0GHz. The new machine supports DDR4 memory with four slots that can accommodate up to 64GB memory.

The new H170 chipset brings the DDR4 support to this form factor and the machine also comes with a PCIe16X v 3.0 for any high end GPUs, one PCIe x4 version 3.0, one M.2 2290 that supports PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 3 storage devices and 1x Mini PCIe half size that supports W Lan cards.

The box comes with 4x SATA 3.0 6Gb/s drive supports with RAID and RST support as well as one eSATA or one M.2 SSD drive connector.

The SH170R6 comes with a HDMI 1.4 and 2X Display Port 1.2 graphics connector, 7.1 line out, line in and microphone as well as Gigabit LAN. The machine has total of 10 USB ports eigh of them being USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0. The machine comes with 300Watt 80 Plus bronze power supply unit and there is an option to upgrade to with Shuttle Accessory PC63J, essentially a 500W power supply for higher end gaming.

This is a great system for people who like smaller PC's and still want the desktop class performance. Things do get cosy in the case but you can put a few SSD drives, a high end GPU, a top class CPU as well as 64GB DDR3L memory .

Shuttle made a name for itself making small form-factor computers and the company has now released a Broadwell 14nm based successor to its DS47 and DS437 models.

The new Broadwell fifth-generation Core PC called DS57U and it also fits in the one-litre PC class. Best of all, it features a Broadwell Celeron 3205U, a dual-core with two threads clocked at 1.5GHz. It comes with a 15W TDP configurable down to 10W, which is enough for this one litre PC to remain fanless. We can imagine that it can get rather hot, but with its business-like chassis and good cooling system, it could keep going for a long time, as there are no moving parts.

Industry users love fanless PCs, as one of the most common things that break are fans, so fanless PCs promise to save money in the long run. The DS57U will not suck a lot of dust into the system and can potentially last longer, with fewer man-hours for maintenance.

The barebone has room for one 2.5-inch drive, two SO-DIMM memory modules up to 16GB DDR3L, as well as one full size Mini PCI express port for mSATA module. The second Mini-PCI Express slot half size comes already fitted with a WLAN module.

The Shuttle DS57U is the company's first barebone with two Intel Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. It measures 20 x 3.95 x 16.5 cm and comes with 2x USB 3.0, 1x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI as well as audio ports.

The front panel has a card reader, four USB 2.0 and two RS-232 ports, something many business users still have to use.

Since the barebone comes with a supplied VESA mount, it can be set upright or mounted on suitable surfaces or monitors. The recommended retail price for the Shuttle Barebone DS57U is €192.00 (ex VAT) and it should be available by specialist retailer right now. We found them available in DACH market starting at €198.90 ready to ship right now.

Shuttle, a company well known for its impressive mini-PC XPC barebones has announced its first network-attached storage (NAS) system, the OMNINAS KD20.

Following the design of its XPC line of barebones, the new OMNINAS is built from a combination of solid aluminum and white plastics in order to blend easily with home and office environments and it is definitely not something that you want to hide in some corner. Based on the PLX NAS 821 dual-core ARM 11 CPU working at 2x750MHz and paired up with 256MB of DDR2 memory the new OMNINAS KD20 uses only 9W in standby mode, 15.5W in average load and a respectful 21W under maximum load.

Since the case is made out of aluminum, the KD20 is pretty cool and the 80mm fan only kicks in at full load, when the temperature reaches a certain level.

As noted earlier, the OMNINAS KD20 is a dual-drive NAS with two hot-swappable drive bays with support for up to 4TB HDDs or SSDs. Drives can be set to work in RAID-1, RAID-0 or in JBOD mode. The energy-saving dual-core CPU also enables rapid read/write data transfers which are set at around 75/55MB/s in optimal test conditions, according to Shuttle.

The rest of the specs include one USB 3.0, two USB 2.0 ports and a card reader. It also comes with Gigabit Ethernet. The new OMNINAS KD20 also comes with AutoCopy feature that copies data from USB or SD cards automatically, has an integrated DLNA-compatible media server, iTunes server and BT download function and comes with free OMNINAS Android and iOSapp for mobile access to the KD20.

According to Shuttle, the new OMNINAS KD20 has a suggested price of €129 (ex. VAT) and should already be available across Europe.

When we got a chance to get our hands on Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 it was simply an offer that we could not refuse, especially due to a quite interesting choice of components squeezed into a 1.57-litre chassis.

As part of Shuttle’s Slim PC lineup, the XS35GTA shares many features with most of the Slim PC series systems. In case of the XS35GTA V3, Shuttle decided to pair Intel’s NM10 Express chipset with Atom D2700 dual-core CPU and AMD’s Radeon HD HD 7410M dedicated GPU, but we will get to precise specifications a bit later.

The impressive part of the XS35GTA V3 is the fact that it is completely passively cooled and thus does not produce any noise. Power consumption of the entire system, according to Shuttle, is set at 19W in idle and up to 27W under full load. To make things even more impressive, components are squeezed into a compact chassis measuring 25.2 x 16.2 x 3.85 cm (DxHxW) and weighing around 2.1kg.

The Shuttle XS35GTA V3 offers an entire office/HTPC system packed in a small, VESA mountable, 1.57-litre chassis that should pack enough punch for full-HD movies, 3D content and regular office work without producing any noise at all.

Package and accessories

Shuttle ships the XS35GTA V3 in a simple cardboard box with a plastic handle. The package itself is not fancy but does feature all the necessary information regarding the product inside.

The chassis is well protected and placed next to another cardboard box that includes the rest of the accessories.

As you can see from the picture below, the accessory box features compartments that contain an external power adapter, stand for the barebone, installation disc and HDD mounting plate with screws.

The external PSU/power adapter is rated at 19V, 2.1A and according to Shuttle’s specification list, is rated at maximum 40W and has automatic voltage adjustment.

The XS35GTA V3 does not come with VESA mount which is actually an optional accessory, just as is an adapter for second 2.5-inch drive.

Specification and features

As noted earlier, Shuttle decided to go for a quite strange combination that features Intel’s dual-core D2700 Atom CPU paired up with AMD’s Radeon HD 7410M graphics, something that we have not seen before.

The XS35GTA V3 is based, of course, on the Intel NM10 Express chipset that unfortunately has no support for USB 3.0, something that most AMD Brazos based HTPCs have. In case you missed it, the Intel Atom D2700, codename Cedar View, is a 32nm dual-core CPU working at 2.13GHz and features 1MB of L2 cache. It features Intel Hyper-Threading, Intel EM64T and VT-X Virtualization technologies and has MMX, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3 and Execute Disable Bit instructions as well as integrated North Bridge with memory controller and graphics.

The Intel Atom D2700 has a single-channel memory controller that supports up to 4GB of DDR3-800/1066 memory. The main drawback of the D2700 is actually its integrated graphics core, dubbed HD Graphics 3600, that is actually a PowerVR SGX545 GPU. Unfortunately, it has no support for DirectX 11 and has a bunch of other problems that Shuttle evaded by simply disabling it and including the Radeon HD 7410M GPU.

The AMD Radeon HD 7410M GPU, codename Seymour-LP, on the other hand is quite an impressive piece of 40nm silicon with a total of 160 stream processors, 480MHz GPU clock and 512MB of dedicated GDDR3 memory clocked at 800MHz. It supports DirectX 11, Shader Model 5.0 and OpenGL 4.1, has AMD’s Unified Video Decoder (UVD 3), has support for full HD decode, Blu-ray playback, has integrated HD audio controller for 7.1 surround sound via HDMI and supports up to two simultaneous displays via digital HDMI 1.4a and analog D-Sub.

Unfortunately, the latest GPU-Z is unable to correctly read the specs of the Radeon HD 7410M GPU but AIDA 64 does it quite well so we managed to confirm the specs that were already listed in Shuttle’s specification list.

The Radeon HD 7410M, when compared to the GPU in the E-450/E-350 APU actually has 80 stream processors more, but works at a slightly lower GPU clock (480MHz vs. 500-600MHz on the Radeon HD 6320 in the E-450 APU) so it should end up to be faster than the GPU found in those quite popular APUs, and of course, the D2700 is certainly faster than any of those APUs so these two sound like a match made in heaven.

You can check out the rest of the specs in Shuttle’s official specification list below.

Since it is mostly made out of plastic we were a bit worried that Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 will be a device that you would rather hide from plain sight, but luckily we were wrong, as the actual build quality is quite good. We must say that Shuttle certainly did not cut any corners and definitely made use of every last millimeter of space. The XS35GTA V3 is rated at 24/7 nonstop operation but needs to have free circulation of air and clear ventilation holes.

As you can see from these pictures, the sides of the XS35GTA V3 are made out of a combination of plastics and aluminum and are actually a large ventilation area.

The front side features one USB 2.0 port, 4-in-1 card reader and place for an optional optical drive or the second HDD (via optional accessory).

The front upper side also includes power and reset buttons that double as power and HDD activity LEDs.

The back of the unit is a busy part of the system as this one includes almost every output and input that you might expect and even would not expect from an office PC or even an HTPC for that matter. From right to left, the XS35GTA V3 features Kensington lock, microphone and headphone jacks, LAN port, four USB 2.0 ports, D-Sub output, HDMI output and power jack.

You might have noticed that we skipped the first HDMI but that one is unusable and comes with a cover plug, same as the second D-Sub output. The first HDMI and the covered D-Sub are actually not usable.

The reason behind this is the fact that the Intel GMA 3650 is actually disabled, as you could see in the specification list, but since Shuttle offers pretty much identical system, sans Radeon HD 7410M graphics, the outputs remained on this one as well.

When paired up with the included stand, Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 actually looks pretty good and we are sure that it would fit any living room.

Inside of the chassis and installation

To be quite honest we did not even check out the installation manual but went on to see if we could figure out the chassis by ourselves.

We were quite surprised to find a single screw and to our surprise, it was the only screw that you need to get rid of in order to get to the inside of the chassis as it holds both side panels of the XS35GTA V3.

The inside of the left side are quite dull as it features a rather large heatsink plate connected to the front heatsinks via heatpipe and a place for an optical drive or optional 2nd HDD.

The right side, on the other hand, is quite interesting as it shows the entire motherboard including place for DIMM memory in two slots, WiFi adapter, place for HDD or SSD and a rather large heatsink connected to two other heatsinks via heatpipe.

The installation of the HDD is quite straightforward as you simply need to screw the mounting plate to the HDD.

Then you simply have to plug it in place and secure it with additional three screws. Pretty simple and once again we did not even have to consult a manual, that by the way, explains it quite good.

The memory is self explanatory as well. Just angle it and simply press the memory module down to secure it.

We decided to pair the barebone with a 320GB 5400RPM 2.5-inch HDD and 2GB of DDR3 memory. Unfortunately, we did not have an extra slim optical drive but the installation is pretty much identical to the HDD as you simply plug it in and secure it with the supplied adapter.

Performance and everyday use

We already had a couple of HTPC units in our hands earlier and one of them was Zotac’s ZBox AD02 Plus that features AMD’s E-350 APU as well as Sapphire’s Edge HD2 based on dual-core Atom D525 1.8GHz CPU paired up with Nvidia’s ION 2 GPU. We also included results from Sapphire’s Pure White motherboard also based on E-350 APU.

In terms of sheer CPU power, the dual-core Atom D2700 is certainly much faster than E-350 CPU part as well as the 1.8GHz D525 Atom. As we noted earlier, the main disadvantage of the D2700 is its GPU part, but in case of Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3, this is not a problem since the integrated GPU is disabled and switched to AMD’s quite decent Radeon HD 7410M GPU with 512MB of GDDR5 dedicated memory.

In order to check out the power of the GPU we decided to check Futuremark’s 3DMark 06 since we already had results from both Sapphire Edge HD2 and Zotac’s ZBox AD02 Plus and it is clear that HD 7410M, paired up with D2700 has more than enough power to compete with both AMD’s E-350 APU and Atom D525/ION2 combination.

The same thing goes for Cinebench R11.5 as Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 clearly has a much better GPU and pretty decent CPU as well.

The PCMark 7 results are sort of a mixed bag, but they are clearly dependant on the choice of the HDD as system in most parts of the benchmark, the XS35GTA V3 clearly steams ahead of the ZBox E-350 APU but in some tests it lags behind. Of course, nothing stops the user to go for a speedier 7200rpm 2.5-inch HDD or even a hybrid drive or SSD and get some impressive numbers on that side as well.

We did not bother with HDD testing as we got the barebone version of the XS35GTA V3 so these scores solely depends on which HDD gets plugged in.

We used the XS35GTA V3 for some casual internet surfing, media playback and even some office work while it remained connected to the 1080p capable TV and we must say that we were quite impressed as it handled everything that we threw at it with ease.

We only regret that we did not test the Blu-Ray and 3D video playback but we simply did not have neither the slim Blu-ray drive nor the 3D-capable TV or monitor so we will leave that for some other time. Of course, according to the specs, AMD’s Radeon HD 7410M support full HD decode and Blu-Ray playback thanks to the third generation Unified Video Decoder so we doubt there will be any problems with that as well.

Temperatures, noise and power consumption

As we mentioned quite a few times earlier, the Shuttle XS35GTA V3 is a completely silent system which can’t be said of many other HTPCs. The fully silent feature does have its advantages but also comes with a price and as you can see from a picture below, the CPU temperature tends to climb as high as 84 degrees Celsius, while the GPU temperature can climb as high as 71 degrees Celsius.

Of course, bear in mind that these temps are highest values that we got after a few hours of extensive benchmarking.

We even decided to put those 24/7 claims to the test and left the little Shuttle XS35GTA V3 idling for a few days and we can happily report that it went without a hitch.

We decided to measure the power consumption and ended up with pretty much same values that Shuttle wrote in its specification and feature list. Under idle mode in Windows 7, when OS actually powers down the HDD and turns off the display, Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 pulls around 15W from the power outlet. On idle desktop without any active applications, Shuttle pulls around 20W. Light surfing with few tabs and Crytek’s CryEngine3 tech-demo running on YouTube in 720p draws an average of 24W. The maximum load that we managed to pull off was around 26W.

Of course, bear in mind that our test bed did not include an optical drive so you should add a few Watts for it as well in case you decide to pair it up with slim Blu-Ray optical drive.

Conclusion

We had a chance to spend a couple of weeks with Shuttle’s latest addition to the Slim PC lineup, the XS35GTA V3, and we honestly have to say that we are quite impressed. With a rather strange combination of Intel’s N10 Express chipset, Atom D2700 CPU and AMD’s Radeon HD 7410M GPU with 512MB of GDDR3 dedicated memory, Shuttle practically managed to make a match made in heaven.

Intel’s dual-core Atom D2700 recently reached EOL (end-of-life) and Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 might not be on the market for a long time, depending on how many parts Shuttle ordered.

The one thing that we mostly liked on Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 is that it is completely silent and produces zero noise. Of course, as we noted in our review, this brings some drawbacks as it needs enough “breathing room” and you can’t cramp it up as it already reaches quite high temperatures when pushed under full load. Of course, these full load states will be rarely reached but it is definitely something to keep in mind.

Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 has enough CPU and GPU power to be a great office PC and great HTPC as well. Unfortunately, Intel’s NM10 Express chipset lacks USB 3.0 support, and that win goes to Brazos equipped systems.

Price wise, Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 has surprised us there as well as Shuttle Europe has informed us earlier that the suggested retail price is set at €233 exc. VAT, but we managed to find it listed in Europe for as low as €222 including VAT. Of course, we are talking about barebone system here so count at least additional €60 for a 320GB HDD and 2GB of RAM memory, so you are looking at a final price of around €280 to €300, which does not sound that bad considering that Sapphire’s Edge HD2 with 2GB of memory and 320GB HDD goes for around €310 (one of the lowest prices) while Zotac’s ZBox AD02 Plus with E-350, 2GB of memory and 320GB HDD sells for around €300 as well.

Of course, Shuttle’s XS35GTA V3 has an advantage of being a completely silent system and performance wise generally ends up faster than most HTPCs (similar priced and similar sized). We simply loved the design and when paired up with some sort of HTPC-friendly wireless keyboard it certainly sounds like a great deal, so we simply have no other choice than to give it an award, although we honestly do not mind.

Shuttle, or to be precise, its European subsidiary, has announced a new update to their fanless XS35 model that is part of the Slim PC lineup. The new XS35 lineup will be available with either integrated graphics, courtesy of Intel, or AMD's HD 7410M graphics, depending on the desired application area.

The new XS35V3 and the XS35GTA V3 are both based on Intel's Cedar Trail platform with NM10 Express chipset and Intel CedarView 32nm dual-core Atom D2700 CPU clocked at 2.13GHz. Both systems are sold as a barebone, which means they come without any memory, HDD or operating system. Both support up to 4GB of DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM memory in two slots.

The rest of the general specifications include a small 25.2x16.2x3.85 cm 1.57l chassis that is completely passively cooled via convective heat transfer, come with an optional DVD or Blu-ray drive, support of SATA HDD, have intergrated audio, card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11bgn WiFi via halfsize mini-PCIe card, D-Sub/VGA output, and is rated for 24/7 nonstop operation.

As noted, the XS35V3 features Intel GMA 3650 graphics, courtesy of Intel's Atom D2700, which runs at 640MHz while the XS35GTA V3 comes with AMD's Radeon HD 7410M graphics based on the Seymore-LP GPU with 512MB of DDR3 memory clocked at 800MHz. The GPU features 160 stream processors and provides an HDMI output for the little Shuttle Slim PC.

According to Shuttle, both barebones should be available immediately with a recommended retail price set at €172 for the XS35V3 and €233 for the AMD Radeon HD 7410M equipped XS35GTA V3.

Shuttle Europe has announced yet another Mini-PC barebone that will be a part of its XPC lineup, the XPC SZ68R5 Mini-PC.

As it is based on Shuttle FZ68 motherboard based on Intel Z68 Express chipset, this barebone supports socket LGA 1155 processors with TDP of up to 95W, can take up to 32GB of DDR3-1066/1333 memory in four slots, has single PCI-Express x16 v2.0 slot, one PCI-Express x4 slot, one mSATA slots for SSD mini cards and one Mini-PCI-Express x1 v.20 slot. The PCI-Express x16 slot has enough room for dual-slot graphics card and include 500W 80Plus certified mini PSU with 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors.

The XPC Barebone SZ68R5 is the first Shuttle's barebone that supports Smart Response Technology by using an SSD drive in the mini-PCIe slot. The cooling of the CPU is done via Shuttle's I.C.E. (Integrated Cooling Engine) featuring advanced I.C.E. heatpipe technology.

The rest of the features and connectivity options include integrated 8-channel HD audio, Gigabit LAN, two SAT 6Gbps and two SATA 3Gbps ports, one eSATA, a total of four USB 3.0 ports (two in front), six USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and DVI-I outputs in case you paired it up with 2nd gen Intel Core CPU with Intel HD graphics.

According to Shuttle Europe, the XPC Barebone SZ68R5 will retail/e-tail with a suggested price tag set at €301.00 (ex. VAT).

Shuttle Europe has announced a new barebone that will be a part of its Slim PC lineup, the XH61 barebone. The new XH61 is based on Intel's H61 Express chipset and features support for Intel's socket LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge processors.

As far as the specs go, the new XH61 barebone is packed in a 242x200x73mm (3.5l) slim X-type chassis and features mini-ITX FH61 motherboard based on Intel's H61 Express chipset. It supports Intel's LGA1155 Sandy Bridge 32nm CPUs with TDP of up to 65W, has two DDR3 memory slots with support for up 16GB of DDR3-1066/1333 memory. Unfortunately, due to the size of the chassis and the motherboard choice, there is no PCI-Express slot so it is limited to Intel's HD Graphics 2000/3000 integrated in the processor.

The rest of the specs include an external 90W power supply, integrated Realtek ALC887 7.1-channel audio, Gigabit LAN controoler, four SATA 3Gbps ports, room for one slimline optical drive and one 2.5-inch HDD, six USB 2.0 ports (two on front panel).

The new XH61 looks like a decent nettop and with a price set at €146 (ex VAT) it sounds like a good deal.

The Chaos Computer Club wants to create a censorship free internet by sticking its own satillites in space. Hackers at the Chaos Computer Club’s Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin proposed an initiative called the Hackerspace Global Grid (HGG), which aims to create and freely make available satellite based communication.

The outfit also says it wants to stick a hacker on the moon in 23 years, but their first goal is to deal with threats to the Internet like the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), by creating an “uncensorable Internet in space.” The project builds off of an earlier idea by Nick Farr in August for a Hacker Space Program.Armin Bauer is working on the communications infrastructure for the project with his team.

His background is with the Constellation platform that uses Internet-connected computers for aerospace related research. It is developing an idea for a network of low-cost ground stations for when the project gets low-orbit satellites up there. The stations would be there to pinpoint satellites and facilitate sending data back to earth.